Master Sergeant

by Mel Odom

  Hope started to blossom inside Sage. He’d wanted something to do for six years. Maybe it wasn’t fighting Phrenorians on the front line, but weeding out the black market and the criminal franchises around Makaum would be a worthwhile task. He could live with that. For now. “Sounds good.”

  “But just so you know, if you do something like what you did last night again, I’ll throw you under the bus.”

  “Noted.” And if the colonel wasn’t in agreement about something, Sage figured he could find a workaround they could both live with.

  “I also want you to know that if you’d come to me last night, I would have joined you and placed a rifle unit behind you. A soldier in my unit never goes anywhere alone. See that it doesn’t happen again.”

  Sage knew the surprise he felt must have registered on his face.

  “The night before last, the corps pushed us.” Halladay rolled the glass in his fingertips. “You were right to push back. You were wrong to do it alone.”

  “I figured I was alone.”

  “You were. But you’re not alone anymore. Sergeant Terracina was following my orders to unseat the drug ops out there in the jungle. We were doing it slow and consistently, making certain of ourselves, being careful not to step on any toes or rock the boat.” Halladay locked eyes with Sage. “Those days are over. Complacency on this post is over. We may not be engaged in the war with the Phrenorians, we may even be sharing a DMZ with the Sting-Tails, but we’re not going to tolerate the black market in any area under our control, and I view the Makaum sprawl as under military protection. Maybe I can’t do anything about what the corps do on their own grounds, but I can shut down known offenders in the DMZ.”

  “All right.”

  “The corps are going to know we’re coming now, though, and they’re going to be more dangerous than ever. The soldiers we’ve got are green and lax. Some of them are even involved in those illegal ops, and some of them are using their products. I want you to train these soldiers, break them and remold them if you have to, and I want you to ferret out whoever is involved with the black market. You find those soldiers, I’ll get rid of them, ship them directly to the front line with warning labels so those commanders don’t get caught flat-footed. Word will get around. I don’t know how fast we can get recruits here, so be aware that you’re going to be whittling down our manpower as you go.”

  “It’s better to have people like that outside the fort than in.”

  Halladay nodded. “I agree, but as we cut people here, they may opt to desert and join the corps’ illegal activities if I can’t get them on a ship fast enough. We’ll be stacking the odds against us, and we’re going to make a lot of enemies.”

  “The odds are already stacked and it’s better to know who the enemy is. We’ll just make sure we know who is on what side of the line.”

  “Finkley is going to be a problem.” Halladay rubbed a big hand over his lower face. “His father is a career diplomat and he put Finkley here. The general allowed it as a favor, but I think he suspects he made a mistake. The major plans on following in his old man’s shoes, and he’s using his stint in the military to shore up relations with the corps and the local politicos. Scuttlebutt even suggests that he’s working with some of the (ta)Klar, providing them information and access to our movements. I can’t touch Finkley because he’s too well connected. Even the general is leery of uprooting the major without good reason, because doing so would trigger an avalanche of political repercussions. Alliance Senator Aldous Finkley watches out for his only son.”

  “You mean, uprooting the major without evidence.”

  “I do mean without evidence. And lots of it if we can get it. Like I said, the major is well connected.” Halladay’s blue eyes hardened. “I suspect Finkley had something to do with Terracina’s death. Or someone close to him did. But I don’t think we’ll ever be able to prove that.”

  Perhaps not, but Sage resolved to try.

  “Therefore,” Halladay continued, “you’re going to be working directly for me. Through a lieutenant who will be theoretically in command of your team.”

  “My team?”

  “I want you to find out who you can trust, and I want you to train them to be fast and lethal out there in the jungle. I want a special-ops task force dedicated to removing the drug labs, corps sponsored and domestic, and start squeezing the black market that’s currently flourishing here. When you’re not training, I want you and those people out there busting heads. And when you’re not out there busting heads, I want you training.”

  The immensity of the operation staggered Sage, but it excited him as well.

  “In order to be successful, you and your team are going to have to operate independently of the rest of the fort. That’s going to trigger some bad feelings among the other soldiers, and you’re going to need to be sure of the people you pull onto your squad.”

  Sage knew the task was harder than Halladay was saying. Sage was new to Fort York. He didn’t have anyone there whom he shared history with.

  Halladay evidently knew what was going through Sage’s mind. “Check the files. Some of the soldiers here are people you’ve trained with. Start small and build as you go, as you’re sure of the soldiers you want on your team.”

  That was, if the attrition rate of the amped-up effort out in the jungle didn’t kill soldiers faster than Sage could recruit them.

  “Is that something you’re interested in?” Halladay stared at Sage over the top of his glass.

  “It is.”

  Halladay grinned. “Then finish that drink. We’ve got a lot to do and this isn’t going to be easy or safe.”

  “I didn’t sign on for either of those things.”

  Special Ops Conference Room 3

  Fort York

  1307 Hours Zulu Time

  A knock sounded at the security door.

  Sage sat in the private conference room with Halladay at a table where a holo hovered in the air between them. Halladay brushed aside the holo of the jungle surrounding the Makaum sprawl, dumping it off view for the moment, then punched up the camera overlooking the door to the room.

  A man wearing second lieutenant bars and carrying a Roley stood at the door. He was average-looking, black hair and doe-soft brown eyes, with a cleft chin. He wore neatly pressed camos and he looked young enough to be a college student or just out of officer candidate school.

  “That is Lieutenant Hadji Murad. He’s going to be the acting officer on your unit. He’s good. Dedicated. But he’s greener than grass. Thankfully, he also takes orders well. And, as far as I can determine, he’s not involved with the corps or the black market. Your job is to train him and keep him alive while you’re out there.” Halladay flicked a hand against the holo and the door’s locking mechanism clicked open.

  Sage got to his feet and stood at attention as the young lieutenant entered the room.

  Murad was a couple inches shorter than Sage, and his skin was a couple shades darker. The lieutenant was also easily a dozen years younger. The young Russian moved well though, compact and fluid. His watchful eyes flicked from Halladay to Sage and stayed there, sizing Sage up.

  Sage held his salute until Murad returned it.

  “Have a seat, Lieutenant.” Halladay waved to one of the chairs. “I don’t think you’ve met Sergeant Frank Sage.”

  Murad sat in the chair next to Sage and studied him briefly. “I have not met him. But I have heard about him.”

  “You’re going to hear more.” Halladay pulled the view of the jungle back onto the holo projection. In terse sentences, the colonel outlined the plans for the special team.

  Sage watched the younger man to see if there was any hesitation or reluctance.

  “As I understand it,” Murad said when Halladay finished, “I’m going to be serving more or less as a rubber stamp to Sergeant Sage’s operations.” He didn’t appear flustered or put out, just interested in clarifying things.

  “No, sir,” Sage said before Halladay coul
d respond. He locked eyes with the younger man. “The colonel explained to me that you’re an intelligence specialist, that you haven’t been on many ops like this before, but you’ve been trained on the hardware we’ll be using. He also told me out of all the junior officers in the fort, you’ve been the one most often out in the jungle.”

  Murad blinked in surprise.

  “The colonel said you had an interest in the flora and the fauna.” Sage grinned. “You may have mustered out of college as a second lieutenant, sir, but your field of study was xenobiology.”

  “It was. I wasn’t aware that anyone knew that.”

  “We are, sir,” Sage said. “This team is going to need both of those pools of information. The intelligence, the cybernetics knowledge, and the xenobiology if we’re going to last more than a few days. In order to effectively hunt our enemies, we’re going to need to know how to trap them, and how to stay alive out in the wild.”

  Murad leaned into the holo then and interest stirred more keenly in his liquid eyes. “This is going to be a very dangerous enterprise.”

  “Yes, sir, it is.” Sage stared into the transparent depths of the jungle, watching as fierce reptiles and giant insects moved through the trees and brush.

  “We need to set up base camps outside the fort.” Murad took out his PAD and took notes with his stylus. “The team will need to get acclimated to the jungle. I assume we’re going to be staying out on patrol for extended periods.”

  Halladay nodded as he poured coffee and pushed cups through the holo to Sage and Murad. “Once we start this, the black marketers are going to want to know who’s raiding them, and they’ll want to strike back. Men who go on these missions are going to be marked.”

  The words the colonel spoke only yesterday rattled through Sage’s mind. We’ve got targets pinned to our backs. That was true, and they were about to outline those targets in neon.

  “We need places that are clear enough to train in.” Sage sipped his coffee. “Places where the water is good, where we can defend ourselves from natural predators, and where the enemy can’t sneak up on us.”

  Reaching out with his stylus, Murad shrank the topography surrounding the Makaum sprawl and marked a few areas with bright red dots. “I know a few places.”

  “We’re going to have to move around a lot.” Sage studied the topography and the dots. “More than that. Those areas are too close together.”

  Murad shifted the stylus and marked more areas.

  “You’ve been to all of these places?” Sage asked.

  “I have. And I’ve got field notes on those areas.” The lieutenant looked slightly embarrassed. “I’ve been working on articles regarding Makaum’s eco-structure . . . in my spare time, Colonel.”

  Halladay nodded. “Understood, Lieutenant.”

  “Have you published any of those articles?” Sage asked.

  Murad glanced at Sage in confusion. “A few.”

  “Then you’ll need to take those places off the map. Once those black marketers figure out you’re part of this, which will be soon, they’ll study you and find those articles. They’ll start guessing where we might be, and they’ll be right enough to cause us problems.”

  “Of course.” Murad tapped some of the dots and they extinguished. Several of them were removed. The lieutenant obviously stayed busy, and Sage felt more confident about Halladay’s choice of officers.

  Sage traced the lines of dots. “These are all along the rivers.”

  “You said you wanted fresh water.”

  “I do, but those rivers are going to be roads that lead right to us. These areas by the rivers, we’ll use those for quick stops, resupply places where we can get what we need and get gone again.”

  Murad’s face brightened in understanding. “You want places that have springs.”

  “And places where we can dig wells.” Sage nodded. The fort had portable automated digging equipment they could use to set up wells. “We need to have sources of water, but they can’t be in any predictable order.”

  The lieutenant’s lips twisted in a smile. “Roger that. You’ve really thought about this operation.”

  Sage looked at the holo map. “This isn’t an operation, Lieutenant. This is war.”

  TWENTY

  Training Holo Unit

  Charlie Company

  Fort York

  0723 Hours Zulu Time

  Dressed in clean camos and fresh from the shower and from a solid night’s sleep, ignoring the stares of the soldiers that followed him down the training facility, Sage strode down the hallway to Holo Deck 13. A lot of times the number was left out of rotation because soldiers still equated 13 with bad luck. As a result, Holo Deck 13 throughout the Terran military tended to be underutilized.

  Pausing at the door, Sage peered through the view-screen. Inside, Sergeant Kjersti Kiwanuka was lying on a raised dais, shooting again and again into the green void that lay around her at targets only she could see. She wore multipocketed camo pants that she had altered herself or had gotten altered, because they fit her well, and a white tank because the holo decks tended to run hot, simulating the mugginess of the Makaum jungle. She was trim and fit, her dark skin shiny with a sheen of perspiration. Her platinum hair fell over her shoulders.

  When Sage pressed his palm against the biometric plate at the side of the door, the door slid back and the program running on the holo deck froze. He stepped through the doorway as Kiwanuka turned to look at him. She rested the stock of the heavy sniper rifle on the skeletal buttstock. Including the oversized silencer, the weapon was almost two meters long, a nasty construction of black matte steel.

  “Sergeant.” Sage nodded at the woman, who still lay prone.

  “My time isn’t up.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “So that door should be locked.”

  “It was.” On Halladay’s orders, Sage had gotten special clearance to nearly every structure at the fort.

  “I guess it’s not anymore.”

  “Not for me.”

  Kiwanuka paused for a moment to just stare at him. “I figured you would be in the brig.” Anger sounded just under the surface of her attitude.

  “I was. For a while.”

  “What changed?”

  “Colonel Halladay had me released.”

  “I didn’t think they would give you time to say good-bye.”

  “Why would I say good-bye?”

  Kiwanuka regarded him suspiciously. “You’re not getting kicked offplanet?”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “You threw a dead body at a DawnStar employee and claimed they were responsible for the ambush that killed Terracina.”

  “I did.”

  “Then why aren’t you gone?”

  “Circumstances have changed.”

  “What circumstances?”

  “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about. When you have time.” Sage raised his voice. “Holo Deck 13. Resume program.”

  The green interior disappeared in an eyeblink and was replaced with the ruins of a city Sage didn’t recognize. Alabaster buildings, most of them broken spires of wreckage, stood against rolling crimson hills that led down to a sparkling azure sea. Several ships sat in a natural harbor, and most of those vessels had flaming sails and men fighting to the death on the heaving decks.

  Kiwanuka settled in behind her rifle and took shots at shaggy combatants. At first Sage thought the enemy were soldiers dressed in some kind of tribal hides, then he saw that he was wrong, that they were excessively hairy beings wearing equally hairy armor that looked like part of their bodies.

  Sage held his hands up in front of his eyes and the holo program dutifully provided a pair of vector laser rangefinder binoculars. He scanned the landscape, piggybacking Kiwanuka’s view through the sniper scope.

  The rifle tracked smoothly across the buildings and picked up a group of five shaggy soldiers sprinting across a rooftop with anti-tank weapons obviously headed for use against the
Terran armor group smashing through the buildings on street level.

  “Who are they?” Sage asked.

  “Iracko.” Kiwanuka’s voice was almost neutral, but Sage detected the hint of emotion there.

  “I’ve never heard of them.” Since the Gates had opened, Terra had been exposed to a lot of new planets and races.

  “It’s from a small war on a planet most people have never heard of. Command wanted to keep it for pride points. The Iracko are from the Tavamox system. They’re violent and bloodthirsty, but they can be cold and calculating. Think of them as Romans without any sense of remorse. They live to conquer and they feed on human flesh. This world is Jufonu. My brother, Kasule, was a Terran medical support person onplanet. He died there defending a hospital. We never got his body back. The Iracko tend not to leave much of their defeated enemy behind, and they don’t take prisoners. Not to keep.”

  Kiwanuka took up trigger slack and the rifle kicked against her shoulder. She rode the recoil out and shifted to her next target, the Iracko warriors at the end of the single line spread across the rooftop. She fired the second round before the first round cored through the leader’s neck and almost decapitated him.

  When the leader sank into an uncoordinated stumble and fell, then began sliding for the rooftop’s edge, the other Iracko warriors halted and immediately turned around to retreat.

  Kiwanuka’s second shot slammed into the last warrior’s head just beneath the helmet, which looked like a skull from some exotic creature. Dead on his feet, the Iracko warrior slumped into a boneless heap while the other three surviving warriors froze in indecision.

  Coolly, like she had all the time in the world, Kiwanuka killed the other three warriors with quick, well-placed shots, no wasted bullets, no wasted movements. The economy of skill was as precise as Japanese haiku or Omrayund ale. The range to the rooftop was 2,027 meters. Movement of even a fraction of an inch would have made Kiwanuka miss her target by centimeters at that distance. All of her shots had gone precisely where she had wanted them to.

  Kiwanuka’s biometric readout hadn’t fluctuated in the slightest. She’d remained totally focused throughout the encounter, her heart rate steady and her breathing regular.